1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to a home network, and more particularly, to providing information about a device to other devices through the home network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol has been widely used as a standard technology for a home network. However, since home network devices based on the UPnP protocol utilize an identifier (ID) system based on a Universally Unique ID (UUID) to recognize and identify each device on the home network, it is difficult for a user to exactly match devices shown in a list through the home network, with devices visually recognized by the user.
FIG. 1 shows a usage environment of a general home network. For example, in homes provided with the home network, a user can reproduce contents stored in a media server using a remote display apparatus by controlling the media server. In other words, the user can cause a digital versatile disk (DVD) player to reproduce a DVD title on a digital television (TV) using a remote controller by loading the DVD title into the DVD player. In order to reproduce the DVD title, the user should specify the digital TV, i.e., a media renderer, for reproducing the DVD title and the DVD player, i.e., a media server, for loading the DVD title.
More specifically, as shown in FIG. 1, in the home network environment, if the user turns on the digital TV in one room and loads the DVD title into the DVD player located adjacent to the digital TV and one or more DVD players exist in other rooms, the user should specify one DVD player among the plurality of DVD players.
FIG. 2 shows information formats of home network devices conventionally provided to a user in the home network environment. As shown in FIG. 2, information which can be obtained by the user searching for media servers in the home network is in the form of device IDs such as <SV-CR5500> or <SV-CR5432> which it is difficult to intuitively match with devices actually seen by the user.
The user cannot see the location information of the devices obtained as a result of the search. Accordingly, even if a device to be used is in the vicinity of the user, the user should know the ID of the device to be used among a number of device IDs. In the service description document for a UPnP Print Enhanced: 1 standard, as shown in FIG. 3, location information of printers in the network environment having the printers is provided in the description, but it is not clearly described how to provide the location information.